• Winner, 2008 Award for Academic Excellence, Chinese Historians in the US (CHUS)

Teachers’ Schools and the Making of the Modern Chinese Nation-State is an innovative account of educational and social transformations in politically tumultuous early twentieth-century China. It focuses on the unique nature of Chinese teachers’ schools, which bridged Chinese and Western ideals, and the critical role that these schools played in the changes sweeping Chinese society. It also documents their role in the empowerment of women and the production of grassroots forces leading to the Communist Revolution.

Teachers’ Schools and the Making of the Modern Chinese Nation-State will attract attention from scholars in Asian studies, Chinese history, educational history, and comparative studies, and will also appeal to graduate and undergraduate students in these fields.

About the Author(s)

Xiaoping Cong is an associate professor of history at the University of Houston.

Table of Contents

Tables
Acknowledgments

Introduction
1) The Imperial School System and Education Reform in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century: A Historical Review
2) Education and Society in Transition: The Rise of Teachers’ Schools, 1897-1911
3) Pursuing Modernization in Trying Times: Teachers’ Schools from 1912-22
4) Modernity and the Village: The Emergence of Village Teachers’ Schools, 1922-30
5) Nationalizing the Local: Teachers’ Schools in Rural Reconstruction, 1930-37
6) Transforming the Revolution: Social and Political Aspects of Teachers’ Schools, 1930-37
Conclusion

Glossary of Chinese Names and Terms
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Reviews

This is a finely organized, deeply researched and highly detailed study…scholars of any aspect of Chinese educational history will find the entire monograph useful, and those interested in women’s history and the growth of the CCP will find new evidence and information about the significance of education in creating a new nation-state.
- Helen M. Schneider, Virginia Tech, The China Journal, No. 62

A major contribution to the study of teachers’ schools in Republican China. Xiaoping Cong’s work helps us understand why China’s rural society and lasting feudal structure were transformed and dismantled during the Republican period and also what led to the success of the Chinese Communist Party in 1949.

- George Wei, author of Sino-American Economic Relations, 1944-49

“The last decade has seen a burgeoning of research on ‘modern’ Chinese education and educational history. Xiaoping Cong’s book stands out because of its important focus on the social role of teacher preparation institutions in the pre-Second World War period. One of its key contributions, particularly for an English-speaking audience, is its extensive use of Chinese language scholarship and archival information.”
Heidi Ross, co-editor of The Ethnographic Eye: Interpretive Studies of Education in China